Web Analytics Strategy
I was doing a talk in Swinburne University a few days ago where I discussed the best strategy for Web Analytics. Now there are multiple ways around this but the best results that we see are when we follow this pattern
Define your target online segment
You don’t want to track everyone who lands on your website. Define that online segment who have the highest chance of conversion.
For us, Melbourne and Sydney visitors are our target market.
Define your conversion and goals metrics
What is conversion for you, be clear with that. Then build some goals around the conversions. It might be selling a product, subscribing to a newsletter, downloading a whitepaper. Then build some goals around your conversion metrics.
- For whitepaper downloads it might be number of pages viewed per visit
- for Newsletter subscriptions it might be number of information pages viewed per visit
- For Product sales it might be how many product pages viewed per session
Define your conversion steps
Build all of your conversion pages following best practices and define the steps clearly. Such as for an online store
Categories/Search Page > Product Page > Cart/Checkout Page > Payment Page > Confirmation Page
Put Call to Action buttons/ links
Put call to action buttons/links on all the pages. Make sure that every customer knows how to buy a product from you, or to subscribe to your newsletter or to download that whitepaper whatever conversion is for you.
Create Conversion Funnels in Google Analytics
Build Conversion funnels in Google Analytics based on your conversion and track them periodically
Create Goals in Google Analytics
Build goals in Google Analytics and track them periodically
Create Segmented Report in Google Analytics
Create the segment of your target market in Google Analytics and use that to track your metrics.
Make changes based on analytics Data
Review the site monthly and make changes on
- Conversion Steps
- Call to action and placement
- Testing and Targeting messages
- Other online elements